A signoria (Italian pronunciation: [siɲɲoˈriːa]; from signore[siɲˈɲoːre], or "lord"; an abstract noun meaning (roughly) "government; governing authority; de facto sovereignty; lordship"; plural: signorie) was the governing authority in many of the Italian city states during the medieval and renaissance periods.

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In the sixth century AD, the EmperorJustinian reconquered Italy from the Ostrogoths. The invasion of a new wave of Germanic tribes, the Lombards, doomed this attempt to resurrect the Western Roman Empire, but the repercussions of Justinian's failure resounded further still. For the next thirteen centuries, whilst new nation-states arose in the lands north of the Alps, the Italian political landscape was a patchwork of feuding city states, petty tyrannies, and foreign invaders.

For several centuries, the armies and exarchs, Justinian's successors, were a tenacious force in Italian affairs, strong enough to prevent other powers such as the Holy Roman Empire or the Papacy from establishing a unified Italian state but too weak to drive out these "interlopers" and re-create Roman Italy.

No ultramontanian empire could succeed in unifying Italy or in achieving more than a temporary hegemony because its success threatened the survival of medieval Italy's other powers: the Byzantines, the Papacy, and the Normans. They and the descendants of the Lombards, who became fused with earlier Italian ethnic groups, conspired and fought against and eventually destroyed any attempt to create a dominant political order in Italy.

It was against this vacuum of authority that one must view the rise of the institutions of the signoria and the communi.

In Italian history the rise of the signoria is a phase often associated with the decline of the medieval commune system of government and the rise of the dynastic state. In this context the word signoria (here to be understood as "lordly power") is used in opposition to the institution of the commune or city republic.

Contemporary observers and modern historians see the rise of the signoria as a reaction to the failure of the communi to maintain law-and-order and suppress party strife and civil discord. In the anarchic conditions that often prevailed in medieval Italian city-states, people looked to strong men to restore order and disarm the feuding elites.

In times of anarchy or crisis, cities sometimes offered the signoria to individuals perceived as strong enough to save the state. For example, the Tuscan state of Pisa offered the signoria to Charles VIII of France in the hope that he would protect the independence of Pisa from its long term enemy Florence. Similarly, Siena offered the signoria to Cesare Borgia.

In Florence, the arrangement was unofficial, as it was not constitutionally formalized before the Medici were expelled from the city in 1494.

In other states (such as the Milan of the Visconti), the dynasty's right to the signoria was a formally recognized part of the commune's constitution, which had been "ratified" by the people and recognized by the pope or the Holy Roman Empire.

The term is also used to refer to certain small feudal holdings in Sicily similar to manorial lordships and, like them, were established in Norman times. With the abolition of feudalism in Sicily in 1812, some of the holdings became baronies. More often, a barony consisted of several signorie.

For example, the word was sometimes used in Renaissance times to refer to the government of the Republics of Florence or of Venice, as in Shakespeare's Othello in which Othello says:

"Let him do his spite:

My services which I have done the signiory

Shall out-tongue his complaints"

- (Act one, scene one)

Occasionally, the word referred to specific organs or functions of the state. The signoria in the Republic of Florence was the highest executive organ, and the signoria of the Republic of Venice was mainly a judicial body.